


Speaker for the Dead

by TheSleepingKnight



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Detective, Gen, Murder, One-Shot, ghost au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:53:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22774438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSleepingKnight/pseuds/TheSleepingKnight
Summary: Lisa Wilbourn can speak for the dead.It's not a gift.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	Speaker for the Dead

There’s someone else worming around her skin this morning. She wakes up smelling smoke and ash and charred flesh, nausea churning in her stomach. Anger works alongside despair to squeeze her throat, and the distinct sensation of cigarette stubs ground out on her arms For a few terrifying moments, she can’t breathe. It passes, and what happened suddenly becomes clear.

“Mimi,” Lisa moans, trying to smother the invasive sensations with her pillow, “please.”

The sensation of being emptied, like water spilling from a cup, and now there’s a dead girl lying on the other side of the bed, hair a black tangled mess and eyes burnt out, skin so pale it could not have been anything other than corpse-flesh. The smothering heat that emanates from her form begins to consume the bed, flames flaring up in a memory made manifest. She radiates sorrow and regret, saying sorry in the only way she could anymore.

“It’s okay, Mimi. Just...not when I wake up, okay?” The ghost nodded and faded from view (but not from the mind, Lisa could still feel the harsh sting of sparks kissing her skin.) Lisa sighs and forces lethargic limbs to get out of bed before the fire can touch her. She has work to do at the police station, after all, and she can’t spend a morning re-experiencing death by immolation. Mimi is one of the few that chose to stay with her, finding comfort in the one woman in the world who could see them.

* * *

(First rule of life: everyone has dead people, one way or another. Lisa had learned that at the tender age of eight, when she was allowed to play with Reggie on grandma’s yard, and happened to discover the elderly woman’s late husband roaming the yard, lost and confused. It hadn’t been immediately obvious he was a ghost, until Reggie ran straight through him. She had tried to get him to see grandpa, to no avail. He had called her crazy and tugged on her hair and dragged her away from the apparition that smelled like the ocean and cigarette smoke. She’d tried telling him again, later that night, but he didn’t believe her. He had called her crazy and dumb and chased her out of his room.

He believes her now.

He’s never once left her side.)

* * *

Lisa fills up her coffee again, moving back around to her desk. The screen itched at her eyes, but the case wasn’t done. The specter of Marissa Shore lingered behind her, two gunshot wounds spilling crimson. She’s trying to tell Lisa something. Lisa sighs, looks around to make sure no one’s coming into the office, and then nods.

Marrisa reaches out, and—

t h e n

I

am

Someone else.

I’m in my house, happily cooking. The pan is sizzling, the moon is glowing, and the world seems right. I live alone, but I’m okay with it. It means I can make breakfast for dinner and no one can tell me no or frown at the crazy Marissa Shore, who listens to old music and dances by herself. I’m content with my lot in life, now that I’ve found my own. It’s nice, being able to dictate my own path without anyone yanking on my metaphorical chains.

I hear someone knock on the door, and secretly hope that it’s an old friend, but I know it’s probably not. Perhaps one of the neighbor’s boys tossed something in the yard again, but it’s kind of late for that. I open the door and see a dark shadow of a man, dressed in black and face covered by black cloth wrappings. I don’t even have time to scream before the bullet leaves my throat.

I’m on the ground now. I can’t move. I’m a puppet with all my strings cut, lying limp and abandoned on the floor, and my stuffing is spilling out as the second bullet enters my stomach. My brain is stuttering, skipping and misfiring in an attempt to keep me alive.

All it really does is allow me to feel what comes next, as the man discards the gun, pulls out the knife, and then—

And t h e n—

Lisa forcibly pulls herself back to the present, the memory losing coherency as the ghost’s distress became too great to sustain the connection. She dry-heaves, thankful she hadn’t eaten too much before coming into work. She’s long since learned not to, given… given.

(The first time she had merged with a ghost and lived it’s final moments, she cried for a week straight, and every time she looked in the mirror she could see her throat, gushing bright red and had to wrap a scarf around her neck to convince herself it wasn’t real. The stories had spread, after that, about crazy little Lisa Livsey who sobs at thin air and was scared of her own shadow.)

So, she’s looking for a man in his...late twenties, perhaps. Solidly built, firm hands. The ease and efficiency with which had worked implied he had killed before. There would be a pattern of some kind. There was almost always a pattern.

“Thank you, Marrisa.” She always thanks the ghosts. It’s only right, given how vulnerable they must make themselves for Lisa to experience their final moments.

The ghost nods and walks away, leaving Lisa to work. When she closes her tab, the gunshot wound on her neck is bright even on the dark background of her screen.

* * *

Five more ghosts have been created as a result of The Masked Man. She dies five more times, but she’s no closer to catching him, and her headache is getting worse. The memories are all starting to bleed together. She’s leaking out of her own skin, and the others are flowing in, parts of their lingering psyches getting caught and stuck inside her. Pancakes at eight, sudden surges of sleep paralysis (a puppet with severed strings, enough blood to stain her white sheets red), and nightmares. Always nightmares.

This is what happens when she lets them in, one after another without long enough cool downs, she gets confused and spacy and this is why no one likes her. She can’t remember what she’s supposed to be doing because she’s too busy staring at the puddle at her feet, her uniform ruined by blood. Her lungs are full of copper and smoke. Her boss is shouting at her, and there are words stuck inside her but she can’t tell whose words they are so she doesn’t speak. The house is burning and so is her boss, a great raging pillar of fire that spits stinging sparks and growls like a wood cracking under the weight of heat. Lisa stumbles back to her desk, forcing herself to breathe through the ghost-induced hallucination, but there’s so much. She’s going to burst if she keeps feeling like this.

She doesn’t really remember driving back home, but when she does, she tries to scrub off the sensations, but the water just turns red at her feet. She’s still lost in the memories that aren’t hers but feel like hers, because she’s spent too long in a dead woman’s head. She lies down to sleep once more and dreams about dragons with talons like knives.

* * *

“Hey. Lisa.”

She stares up from her desk to see a face she doesn’t recognize.

“...Hi.” She says back. “What’s up?” A greasy paper bag lands on her desk, and she nearly chokes on the smell of grease and burnt meat that smells sickeningly rich. It turns into the smell of burnt flesh in her head too easily, and she fights to keep the alien rush of panic and disgust down. “The boys went and got dinner. Thought you might like to eat— you’re skin and bones, girl. Get some meat in you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat more than an energy bar or two in months.” “T-thanks.” Lisa says, and as soon as she can, she dumps in a trash can, goes to the bathroom, comes back with an even lighter stomach.

It’s just all too much right now.

* * *

Dried blood under the lastest woman’s nails.

DNA matches.

A face appears in her mind and it matches the one that’s glaring at her on the screen.

They’ve got his name. _Krouse Summers._

The hunt is on, and Lisa feels more awake then she has in weeks. The despair has turned to rage, and rage keeps her adrenaline pumping and potent.

* * *

Lisa is running after him. They’d managed to find his pattern, targeting women who had all attended the same class in college with _Krouse Summers,_ which lead to a house, and now a chase. She can feel the specters behind her pulsating with anger, and their desire for vengeance, for justice, fills Lisa up until she can’t feel her legs screaming in exhaustion. She feels more powerful than she has in a long time, limbs on fire. She gets close enough and leaps, tackling the murderer to the ground. What follows is animalistic and brutal, but it’s eight on one, and Lisa has a host of guardian demons screaming inside her head, so it’s over fast.

After the fact, it’s easy to claim it was self defense. She had tried to take him in peacefully, but he had pulled a knife, and she’d grappled and punched and kicked until he stumbled back and hit his head against a tree hard enough to bash his skull. Or Marrisa had. Or Jessica. Or any of the ghosts could have, really. Lisa isn’t sure there’s a difference anymore.

There is one thing she’s sure of.

_His_ ghost doesn’t stick around.

The other specters soon leave, eventually, their murderer sent to somewhere he can’t hurt anyone anymore, and now it’s just Lisa and her small entourage of ghosts again. Mimi, Reggie, and…

Her.

Lisa sleeps, and this time she dreams of butterflies trailing across the sky.

It’s a good dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Realized I never posted this to Ao3. Whoops.


End file.
